She stomped lightly on the floor as she stood up abruptly from the sofa, cutting Tycho off in mid-sentence. Alright, she was agreeing to what they’d decided. For the moment. Didn’t mean she had to like it, though!

Tycho stood also, looking around in surprise, as Diane and Tyler left the suite without saying a word. He followed Diane’s retreating back as she left the room, and swung around to look at Bette with raised eyebrows as the door shut behind Tyler.

Bette hadn’t stood up, and was still sitting in the chair on the opposite end of the cocktail table between them, her hands forming a steeple, elbows resting on the plush armrests of the chair, eyes trained upward, at something in the ceiling.

He tried a joke, commenting drily, “You won’t turn to stone, you know, if you look at me,” with a light, bantering tone, not knowing where to start, now that something in the dynamic earlier had apparently changed.

Bette continued to stare at the ceiling, and then said in a cool voice, “Funny thing.”

Tycho sat, and leaned back on the chair, then asked, “What?”

Bette shifted her glance quickly at him, eyes stony, and answered briefly, “Taste.”

“Whose?”

“Diane’s.”

He pursed his lips, and set them in a firm line. He had the grace to lower his glance. “Oh.”

“Keep her out of this.”

“Got it.”

“Good.”

”So, alright,” Bette continued, “We don’t have much time, so you say. Why don’t you tell me what you think I should know?”

He blew out a breath, still thinking about what Bette had told him to do, basically, concerning Diane. Normally, he would blow past something like that. But he could see, judging by how Diane and Tyler acted around her, that things were different with Bette. Or maybe because of this situation, they were circling the wagons around her.    

Counting back from five, he then started, bringing his eyes back up to meet hers, “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and guess that you know something about the gold market already.”

She pursed her lips, and remained impassive behind those steepled fingers.

”Okay, bear with me a second, and let me ask you something,” he tried again.